reframing femininity
There is a war that rages in my heart between life and death, right and wrong, sorrow and joy, good and bad, faith and fear. I have learned, through prayer and meditation, to love and honor both sides of the war and to rest in the middle ground, where peace is always awaiting my return.…
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When the world shut down and we all came home, I turned my red desk to face the window. It felt too vulnerable and a tad inappropriate to have so many eyes on my bed behind me. The door seemed an acceptable view for strangers on screens and so, the construction zone across the street…
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I am done proving me. My life is not one prolonged job interview, a permanent Olympic trial, an ongoing all-state music audition. I am not a college application for admissions officials to peruse, an employee scrutinized for business acumen or her annual performance review, an associate striving to make partner. I refuse to be
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Everywhere I turn, there is nothing. Vast nothingness all around me. As far as my eye can see is emptiness. Dry, arid, dusty, flat and desolate nothingness. My heart is broken into a million pieces. Shattered into dust on the ground. It’s hard to distinguish between the dust of my broken heart and the dust…
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Sadly, the body of Christ has often failed to see trauma as a place of service…I think a look at suffering humanity would lead to the realization that trauma is perhaps the greatest mission field of the twenty-first century. (Diane Landberg, 2015, Suffering and the Heart of God, p. 8) Almost eleven years have passed…
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She peers over the edge of her handlebars, wondering at the hill ahead. Can she go down it with eyes closed? Can she hold her breath long enough to make it to the bottom? Wind in her hair as she unstraps the helmet, dangling it below the bars, she grips the rubber under her little…
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Dreams awaiting daylight. I have so many. Planted in the secret, quiet confines of a tender heart. But how do you dream anew after years of hopes unanswered? After giving your all and coming so close but it not being quite enough? How do you dare ask for the impossible, when you’re battered and bruised?…
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“Why do you say you have no one?” Stare. “What makes you feel no one understands?” Stare. “Can you make a box in your mind and fit the stories inside?” Stare. Blank. I stared. Thoughts echoed inside but I didn’t dare say them out-loud.
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I stood in the spotlight, strumming the first four chords I’d ever learned on guitar over and over and over again. I couldn’t remember the first note of the song. I’d been playing guitar for over ten years, having played in front of people hundreds of times. A minute went by. Another minute passed and no notes came. One…
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Money was tight. I mean tight. There wasn’t any extra, not a lick. We had stepped out in faith to build the house. THE house. This was the house we would stay in forever. This was the house our children would move out of and our grandchildren would run into. We had been working and…
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